The Communist Party newspaper People's Daily rang in the new year with an editorial denouncing Western values and pinning China's economic hopes on the "perfection" of socialism. "Everything must serve economic construction," it said. The front-page editorial reflected the thinking of the party's ruling Central Committee, which convened last week to chart China's economic course through the decade.

After some unsettling equivocation, the Obama administration has embraced a Senate bill that would offer limited protections to reporters who have promised confidentiality to their sources. The compromise reached by the administration and members of the Senate Judiciary Committee is imperfect, but it brings a federal "shield law" closer to enactment than at any time in recent history. The Times and other major news organizations would prefer that every source for a news story be identified.

Are they stressed? Sick? Sad? Mortified? Who can see the stand of palm trees on the corner of 2nd and Spring and not feel just a tinge of pity? Yellow and brown fronds droop from their once-proud crowns as if thieves had pried loose their jewels and left the tattered settings to dangle, prongs askew. It's probably stress. The Urban Forestry Division of the Department of Public Works says the transplanted palms will need up to a year to adjust to their new home on the grounds of the new Los Angeles Police Department headquarters.

Atty. Gen. Jerry Brown certainly knows how to warm the hearts of Californians who are angry at their government: slash politicians' salaries. Last week he signed off on the full 18% reduction ordered earlier this year by the independent panel that sets official pay. But Brown went one satisfying step further. The Citizens Compensation Commission had ordered the reduction to begin next year when new lawmakers take office, and the Legislature asked the attorney general if that was legal.

The Times has endorsed former studio executive and city commissioner Christine Essel in Tuesday's 2nd District City Council runoff. We urge voters in that district -- from the hill communities of Lake View Terrace, Sunland and Tujunga, south to the boulevards of Sun Valley, Valley Glen, Van Nuys, North Hollywood and Valley Village, and back up into the hills of Sherman Oaks and Studio City -- to go to the polls and vote. And just get it over with. This has been a frustrating and troubling special election season.

The final judgment has been entered in the long, messy, costly and frustrating lawsuit between the city attorney and the comptroller. And now that she's lost, Controller Wendy Greuel has the power to let it drop. She shouldn't. Greuel should appeal. That may appear on its face to be a change of position for this page, which in the last year repeatedly called on the parties to settle the suit over the scope of the controller's audit power. But, in fact, we're staying the course.

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger nominated Sen. Abel Maldonado (R-Santa Maria) to be lieutenant governor more than a month ago. The Legislature must soon begin grappling with the governor's budget plan, so it should waste no further time and swiftly confirm Maldonado to the post. Democratic lawmakers might drag their feet on confirming their Republican colleague for several reasons, all of them bad. Perhaps they think they can use the confirmation as a bargaining chip with the governor.